What a difference a governor makes. Not our governor, I’m sorry to report. To see good leadership at work, look south, to Columbia, the capital city of the other Carolina.

A Republican lawmaker there filed a copy-cat “bathroom bill,” which like North Carolina’s, requires transgender people to use the public bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificates. It’s about public safety, he said.

The bill was filed last Wednesday. On Thursday, Gov. Nikki Haley — also a Republican — refused to pander to ignorance and bigotry. The bill simply isn’t necessary in South Carolina, she said, where people are respectful and kind. Nobody, she said, has reported that their freedoms are being violated bytransgender people using their preferred restrooms.

“While other states are having this battle, this is not a battle that we have seen is needed in South Carolina,” Haley said. “And it’s not something that we see the citizens are asking for in South Carolina.”

We didn’t need it in North Carolina either. But political overreaction to a Charlotte ordinance gave it to us anyway. Last summer, some of the city’s major sportingvenues — football, basketball and NASCAR — adopted policies of allowing transgender patrons to use the restrooms that corresponded with their gender identification.

There were no reported problems. No child molesters in drag trying to attack little girls or any of the other ugly scenarios that Gov. Pat McCrory and Senate leader Phil Berger conjured up as reason for a law.